


A Friend in Need

by Yuko6754



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Planet, Aliens, Dragons, Friendship, Gen, Heroic Cycle, Minor Character Death, Original Fiction, POV First Person, Stages of plot, Telepathy, written for school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuko6754/pseuds/Yuko6754
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jairus wakes to find himself locked in a prison cell, unable to speak and unable to transform into his dragon half, and it is unheard of for anybody to break out of Leroitian prisons. Jairus has two choices: remain and rot in prison or break out and prove history wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Friend in Need

**Author's Note:**

> This is a paper that I initially wrote for school. I had a limit of 5 pages which did not allow me to explain everything as I wanted to about Jairus or his planet. This is the edited version of the story (the original was in 3rd person) and is the version that I am going to turn in for a final grade.

I woke up to a wet, rough tongue licking my cheek. Right on the heels of that I felt a bone-deep ache settle in my body, and my mind struggled to piece things together and make sense of what I was doing in a cell beneath one of the enormous experiment facilities. Slowly, everything returned to me.

I had heard something in the lab where I worked as a scientist, and at the time I’d thought it was nothing, just a stupid rumor that some of my coworkers were throwing around. Three days later I had been arrested and knocked unconscious. When I awoke I didn’t need them to tell me where I was; I figured it out for myself easily enough. Judging from the cold metal table I was strapped to, and the bright overhead lights and intimidating-looking machines to either side of me, I guessed that I had been taken to one of the underground laboratories used for living test subjects. The scientists, people I knew, put me under again once they realized I was awake.

Now I was awake again, and this time I was staring at a pair of slitted golden eyes like my own. My mouth opened but no sound passed my lips save for a soft wheeze. The owner of the eyes, a small golden-yellow dragon with two tiny horns, shook its head.

“You can’t talk anymore cause your voice’s gone. Mine’ll probably be gone soon, too, cause they’ll just keep testing us ‘til we die.”

Even half awake, I knew that the dragon spoke the truth, though the fact that the creature was actually speaking in the first place was an anomaly. Nobody could talk in their dragon form. I heaved myself off the dirty floor and leaned against the back wall. I was stuck; there was no way to escape from the cells, much less the compound, without at least a gun for defense. And on top of that, there was a strange hollowness inside my tall, lean frame, like a part of me was missing.

The cell was musty and damp and the lights were dim, only serving to increase my feeling of hopelessness.

“We’ll just have ta escape before then!” the dragon proclaimed.

I swallowed hard a few times to rid myself of the dryness in my throat, and I glowered at my chatterbox of a cellmate. I opened my mouth to reflexively snap at the dragon only to belatedly remember that I’d lost my ability to speak. The dragon’s jaw opened, to laugh at me, no doubt, when the first explosion occurred. The floor and walls vibrated as another deafening boom sounded and fell to the side, head spinning with the sudden movement.

Thick smoke filled the passage outside my cell and limited how far I could see. I heard rapid footsteps even above the cacophony overhead, and I saw a blurry silhouette stop outside my cell. The sounds of yelling and screaming from above had me wondering what exactly had happened to cause so much chaos. Explosions were somewhat common in our line of work; something very valuable must have been lost.

I stood, using the wall as support, hardly noticing as the tiny, obnoxious dragon fluttered up to perch on my shoulder to watch the shadowy figure. The door swung open. Were they coming to kill me to ensure that I would not leave in the confusion? If so, I was not going without a fight, even if I had no chance to win.

The figure ducked into the cell. Liam’s bright orange eyes shone through the murk and I smiled a small, exhausted smile, mouthing the newcomer’s name. I did not receive a smile in return, but that wasn’t surprising. My friend approached swiftly, held a gun out to me, and fixed me with an intense look behind a pair of spectacles.

“They separated you from your dragon half, and that is why you cannot speak while the dragon can. It is because he is a part of you; he is you. You two are a prototype for a pseudoscientific experiment!” Liam, who usually never raised his voice above a normal speaking voice, had to shout to be heard.

“Liam,” the dragon’s voice quivered, “what do we do?”

“There is a door at the other end of the hall. It will lead you to the surface. Be careful,” Liam left the cell and faced the way he’d come.

I followed carefully and coughed when the bitter chemical-laced smoke filled my mouth. I turned toward the other end of the hall and noticed that the cloud of smoke was dissipating. A shout came from behind me and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw my friend face-to-face with a small group who had come to make sure the prisoner was still locked up. Liam’s own gun was out and he was firing off rounds immediately. I hesitated. While Liam was a good shot, he could not survive on his own for long. My friend glanced back at me during a small lull and gave me a brief, grim smile before turning back to the task at hand. I turned and ran down the hall toward the door, and although I had been told to go, I still felt sick that I had just left my best friend to face the music on his own.

The hall was deceptively long, and by the time I reached the door the gunshots had faded significantly. I was lucky that I hadn’t met anybody else on my way, but there were sure to be guards on the outside. I clicked the gun’s safety off and opened the door, revealing a steep staircase that ascended to the surface. I latched the door shut behind me and locked it as an afterthought before taking the steps two at a time, with the little dragon clinging onto my shoulder. There wasn’t even a doorway barricading the exit of the passage, and for that I was grateful. What I wasn’t’ grateful for were the five guards clad in deep purple and blue that zeroed in on me.

Two of the guards didn’t even have guns, but it was those two that worried me the most. There was never any recapture on Leroit; if a criminal escaped they were killed on sight, no questions asked. I managed to take the three gun-toting guards down on my own, one bullet each, before they could even begin to retaliate. I didn’t bother raising the gun against the remaining two and instead just stood there, waiting for the inevitable outcome. If what Liam said was true, there was no way I would be able to escape. With a mighty roar, the guards’ bodies became engulfed in a vivid red light and I found myself facing two red dragons about three times taller and bigger than me. The gun was limp in my grasp and, again, I experienced a bout of hopeless frustration. Freedom was just beyond the two dragons, but I wouldn’t be able to claim it because there was no way I could fight them without the ability to transform.

It was hopeless, and I knew that. I wished I had stayed behind to help Liam, even though I knew my friend had probably been captured or possibly even already killed. The two dragons inhaled deeply, their mouths opening wide to reveal far too many sharp and deadly teeth for my liking. A dull, glowing light began to grow in the back of their throats, growing brighter and brighter as they gathered energy. Only a single blast from one dragon would kill me, but two would completely obliterate me.

It wasn’t like I would miss much of my home planet, if I was honest, though I supposed I would miss the forays into the forest to gather samples of wildlife to use in my own experiments that I conducted on the side. I would also miss Liam, the only one who I had come to view as a friend throughout years of mostly tedious work. So I did the only thing I could think of to prepare myself: I closed my eyes and resigned myself to death.

_Jairus, move!_ The voice was clear as day, and yet I swore it had come from inside my own mind. A sudden gust of wind strong enough to shove me to the ground swept over me, and a resounding roar dominated even the alarms sounding from the laboratory behind me. I raised my head and my golden eyes widened when they landed on a gigantic golden-yellow dragon. It towered over even the two red ones, inhaling deeply just as they had done but in almost a third of the time, and then exhaled with a thunderous bellow. A pure white beam shot out of the golden dragon’s maw and collided with both of the red dragons, sending them flying backwards, where they landed in a charred heap. They had died as soon as the beam struck them.

Gingerly, I picked myself up off the ground and stared at the corpses of the two dragons for a few moments before seeking out the suddenly absent golden one. It had disappeared, but I felt a light weight settle on the top of my head and I glanced up. The tip of a single claw just barely entered into my line of sight, indicating that the massive dragon had returned to its previously small state and decided to make a nest in my brown hair.

I strode past the rapidly cooling bodies of the guards and into the dense forest. I knew full well that the woods were dangerous, and could even be called intelligent, but I was confident in my ability to traverse the terrain without too much difficulty. Unlike most of my coworkers, I was genuinely fascinated by the wildlife that covered much of Leroit.

Cautiously, I reached out with my mind.

_So,_ I began, _telepathy?_ I supposed it should have felt strange, but it was just like talking to myself. Still, it was interesting, being able to communicate with just my mind. I stepped over a fallen log, careful not to touch it. I didn’t escape being annihilated by two of my own kind just to die of the acidic poison coating the log.

_Right, except you can only do it with me, isn’t that fun?_ The little dragon transferred himself to my right shoulder. I bypassed a thorny tree and continued deeper into the forest, inhaling the sweet aroma of the plants and flowers.

_No,_ I replied finally, thankful that I wasn’t necessarily tall or heavyset, as the trip through the underbrush would have been even more difficult. If worst came to worst, and it probably would, I figured, then the little dragon might be able to help me again, as much as I was loathe to admit it. I had always depended on myself and relying on someone else was a novel concept.

_Arya. That is what I will call you. After my father. After _our_ father,_ I murmured. I could have sworn I heard the newly-named Arya make a murring sound of approval.


End file.
